GMC Plans Discussions On Local Fuel

(Host)
Green Mountain College will be kicking off a
series of round table discussions in February designed to reduce the school's
carbon footprint - and boost the local economy.

VPR's
Nina Keck has more.

(Keck)
Green Mountain College has been working hard
to lessen its carbon emissions. Last spring the school installed a biomass
plant, which now provides 80 percent of its heat and 20 percent of its
power.

While
the plant burns woodchips, a renewable source of fuel, the college currently trucks
in that fuel from all over New England.

College
officials admit that the environmental impact and added cost of transporting those
woodchips limits the plant's environmental benefits.

Over
the next year, the college will use a $73,000 grant to study the feasibility of
using locally produced fuel.

(Mittlefehldt) "What
we're trying to do is figure out a process by which preferably other
communities might be able to learn from. So we're holding a series of round tables
- trying to make the connections between all parts of the production process. So
the mill owners, the loggers, the land owners the college, foresters in the
area and try to really figure out ways to create a community scale energy
projects like this that are based on a wide variety of disparate stake holders
- get them in a room together and try to make decisions to make this sustainable
for the long term."

(Keck)
Mittlefehldt says hopefully, they can come up with a template that other
colleges or communities could use.

She
says Green Mountain College sees biomass as one of
several renewable energy sources that they want to make use of.

Like
wind and solar power, biomass is not without its detractors. Mittlefehldt says part
of the challenge facing the college is to ensure that any wood used for fuel is
harvested in away that won't harm the landscape.

Courtesy: Green Mountain College

Ames Hall at Green Mountain College in Poultney. The school has been named the "greenest" in the U.S. according to Sierra Magazine.

(Mittlefehldt) "You may
have to pay a little bit extra to get that level of assurance that these chips
were sustainably harvested. But that
will be one of the things that will have to be figure out in these round tables
is how much more are we willing to pay to ensure that these kind of
ecologically sustainable practices are being used."

(Keck)
She says if done right, the college can help the ecological sustainability of local
forests, boost the economic and social sustainability of nearby communities,
and create a roadmap for others.